


Accompaniment

by TheGoldenGhost



Category: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Gen, Just read it I promise it's mostly Soft and Fluffy, Well some things hurt but that's a given, also there's a bit of shippy-ish stuff but that's not the main focus so I tagged it as gen fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 06:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20130673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoldenGhost/pseuds/TheGoldenGhost
Summary: Pierre Aronnax gets a music lesson.





	Accompaniment

Music was a constant presence in Pierre Aronnax’s life aboard the _Nautilus_. The captain played it almost nightly, and sometimes at brief intervals during the day as well. So far from the rest of the crew, it was like having a private concert, as well as a glimpse into Nemo’s hidden moods.

Pierre knew not to interrupt Nemo when he played his soft and mournful dirge-like songs, one after the other, or to enter the room unbidden when the organ’s tones grew quick, fierce, and angry. The worst ones of all were only played rarely, and late at night – long, wailing melodies that held nothing but anguish and sorrow. Pierre often had to cover his ears to drown them out in order to sleep.

But then, there were the other times. The times when the music had no real constant mood, or when Nemo’s selections were softer, lighter. It was a sign that he was not playing to shed the pent-up burdens of his heart, but rather for the fun of it. During these times Pierre could call out requests, and more often than not, Nemo would oblige, switching melody easily in mid-song with the skill of a master. Pierre suspected he rather liked the chance to show off his talents to an audience.

So it was that night, with Nemo playing something Pierre didn’t recognize, possibly Dussek, while the professor was reclined on one of the couches, halfheartedly going over some notes on the flora and fauna of the Torres Strait while he was absorbed in the music.

“Can you play Bach?” Pierre asked.

“Which one?” Nemo retorted, without changing his tune.

Pierre thought about that. “Never mind. What about Handel’s ‘Water Music?’”

Nemo switched over to it easily.

“What, that wasn’t even hard for you? To just pick up in mid-song like that?”

“You picked a very easy song.”

“All right, then, what about one of Scarlatti’s sonatas?”

“One out of five hundred…?”

“Surprise me!”

Nemo shrugged and started playing one, Pierre had no idea which. He sat back again and got lost in the melody once more. When the song ended and Nemo started playing something else, Pierre called out another request. “What about Schumann’s “Carnaval?”

The music ceased at once, and Pierre looked up from his notes, surprised by the sudden silence. “What? Is that too difficult for you?”

“No,” Nemo replied. He was sitting very still, almost rigidly. “Why… why that one?”

“Why not that one?”

“I don’t play it,” Nemo replied, and went back to the piece he’d been working on before.

Pierre tried to focus on his notes, but curiosity was one of his more poignant vices, and it was rapidly getting the better of him. Besides, if the captain didn’t want to answer the obvious question, he wouldn’t, and that would be that. “Why don’t you play it? Is it too long?”

“Not nearly,” Nemo said.

“Then why?”

Nemo stopped again, turned to Pierre, his face solemn. “If I tell you, will you promise not to ask any further questions?”

Pierre nodded slowly. He could already tell that this was a path that he probably ought not to have treaded down, but such was his fascination with the captain and his eccentricities that he pressed forward without hesitation.

“That piece you requested was a favorite of my elder daughter, Srishti,” Nemo said quietly. “I would play it, and when she heard the opening chords, no matter where she was, if she heard it, she would come running. It was a game of ours, that if I ever wanted her all I needed to do was to play that song and she’d appear.” He smiled. “After a while, she began to realize the exact length, and I would have to play almost to the Promenade before she’d come, but she always did. Always.”

Pierre sat silently, taking that in.

“And so there is very little use I have for it, you see? She won’t – she won’t come.” he paused, sighed. “And you said you would ask no more questions, so…”

“She must have been quite enchanted with your music,” Pierre stated simply. Not a question, but an invitation. Nemo saw through the ploy at once, though.

“Leading statements count as questions, sir,” he replied.

“They do not. Besides, you could have answered with only yes or no and then I would have had nothing else to work with,” Pierre retorted.

“She _was_ enchanted,” Nemo went on, relenting without further argument. “She had a gift for music – I don’t know if she got it from me, or if it was only the luck of nature to have two in the family. But from the time she could get around on her legs she’d clamber up onto my lap as I played and put her hands over mine to get a feel for the music, the motions. I taught her as much as she could learn at that age.”

“Wonderful,” Pierre said. “Simply wonderful…”

“It was,” Nemo agreed. “And you know, she composed her own things. I have a few of hers. Duets. I could show you, if you like. You could play her parts.”

“Me?” Pierre asked, bewildered.

“Why not?” Nemo glanced back towards the professor, his eyes warm. “You can read music, can’t you?”

“I… I _can,_ but I have no gift for playing. I don’t even know how to use an organ like yours, I wouldn’t be able to –“

“Oh, nonsense. Surely you can play almost as well as a five year old child. Look here,” he crossed the room, towards a small corner shelf that looked little-used. The books stuck there were dusty and unsorted. “I don’t use sheet music often, but I have it, in case any of the crew ever wants to try it… although they never do,” he began flicking through the different books. “And I _know_ I kept her writing here, it’s just a matter of – ah, there it is.”

Pierre didn’t know quite what to make of all this. He took the sheet the Nemo held out to him with the reverence he supposed it deserved, being an original, the only one of its kind, from a child who had died far too young to reach her full potential.

Delicately, he scanned it. The piece was simple – he couldn’t make it out in his head, but he could certainly hit the notes even with his lack of teaching. They were a bit blocky and unevenly drawn, marked down by the careful, untrained hand of a little girl. Pierre noted with some amusement the tempo marks, “alegroe” followed by a later instruction, “cresendoe” scribbled out in embarrassment with the proper symbolic marker placed beside.

The other part was much more complex. “Yours?” Pierre asked.

Nemo nodded. “Ordinarily, as you know, I like to use the black keys alone. But I wrote my part to accompany hers, and I wanted to give her her artistic integrity.”

“Of course,” Pierre said, studying the sheet. When he glanced up at Nemo again, the captain’s face was unreadable, but Pierre sensed that he expected something. “I’ll play it with you, if you would like. I’d be most grateful to hear it.” Whatever Srishti had written, Pierre was certain he would love it.

He took his place on the bench with Nemo close beside. Pierre glanced at him, about to ask where to put his hands, but he didn’t need to. Nemo gently took both of Pierre’s hands and placed them in the starting position. “Can you go from there?” he asked.

“I think so, sir,” Pierre replied.

“Very good,” Nemo said, and nodded for Pierre to begin.

On Pierre’s part, it was awful, slow, not allegro in the slightest, and he missed every other note. It didn’t help that the portion of the song he was playing was written by a young child and sounded very much like it had been. Simple, with no apparent flow to the notes, although there were trills thrown in because, apparently, Srishti had found them entertaining. Pierre couldn’t play them, though, so he skipped them over.

Nemo, on the other hand, had constructed a beautiful underlying melody that, if played in the correct tempo, would have no doubt been a lovely accompaniment to his daughter’s work. Even slowed down to match Pierre’s pace it sounded melodious, deep with harmony.

When it came to an end Pierre looked over in embarrassment. “Well. How was I?”

“I was unfortunately mistaken, Professor,” Nemo said, bemused. “You cannot play _nearly_ as well as a five year old child!”

Pierre couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, what did you expect? I did warn you I was no great musician!”

“So you did,” Nemo’s eyes were bright. “Ah, but what did you think of it? I know she was a novice – but she didn’t have the years of experience that most do,” his smile faded. “Think on that, Professor… what she could have done with more time? Just imagine…”

Pierre could almost imagine it, Srishti, almost a grown woman now and sitting at her organ playing music of her own composition, lovely and bright and full of trills and crescendos. The music she could have brought into the world. He could imagine her sitting beside her father as he accompanied her, the two of them combining their pieces in perfect harmony, a work of love.

But instead there was silence. A dusty composition penned by a little girl who never got to know what she was capable of.

Pierre didn’t even have words to describe it. He tried, meeting Nemo’s gaze full-on, but he could not find the way to describe what he felt. So much affection and tragedy in a simple duet composed by a child and her father.

Pierre did not have the words. But Srishti did, and Pierre gestured to Nemo to begin a second time. This time, Pierre tried to play as briskly as he could, as its composer intended. 


End file.
